Closing the Boxes

What to do on a snow day.. ??  Make some lutherie progress.. Both the Crossover Guitar and Tenor Uke now are closed up and ready for binding prep work once the clamps come off..

Back on 

And all closed up

This one top first

Closed up as well

Ukulele Side Bender

As I said I was not happy with how the Uke sides bent, So I redid them, but before I did I rebuild my bender to a Fox style.

Works great. Should have done this earlier...

Tops Done

So the Ukulele top and the Guitar top are braced and voiced ready to go on the rims.

I'm bending new Ukulele rims as I was not happy with the original, oh well that's the way it goes sometimes.

Hopefully I can get the boxes closed in the next few days.

The guitar top still needs the cut out removed but I am doing that after it is braced and voiced, not sure if that is the correct approach but that's how I'm doing this one.

Progress.....

I've made a bit of headway on the Crossover Guitar.. The back is jointed and glued and the sides are bent and glued to the blocks with the cutaway done.

I also wanted to make my own bindings so I could try a bit of a different design. Essentially a regular binding with a shallow rabbet cut in the front face to accept a piece of veneer. This should make a nice stiff binding and give the option of using various veneers for aesthetics.. TO that end I made a jig awhile ago to aid int cutting the kerfings in the bindings. It worked pretty well. the jig is based on one from the Australian and New Zealand Luthiers Forum..

http://www.anzlf.com/viewtopic.php?t=1269

Sides with the cutaway defined and ready for kerfed linings

Kerfing going on the back side

Progress thus far..

Back to Building

Well after a great summer and a even better vacation in Nepal it's time to get back to building instruments. The parts of the Tenor Ukulele and Crossover Guitar are sitting around waiting to be completed so.. I've thicknessed the sides of the Crossover and hopefully will get them bent in the next day or two. I've also go the linings on the Tenor Ukulele.

In addition I've been thinking a lot about the next project and picked up some amazing wood for that, but can't start that until these two are done..

Sides bent and end block glued on

Gluing on the kerfing

More Rosette Work

Been doing a bit more work on the Crossover guitar rosette. It's done now except for a little bit of cleanup. I thin it turned out good, not how I originally designed it but good. I need to build a jig for making better more consistent segments.

With Guitar building there is always one more jig to build....

Cut to size and inlaid into the top

Outer & inner purfling added and planed down

Planed and scraped

Looks good.

Finished with the sound hole bound in black

Working on Rosettes

One of the nice things about doing this just for fun at this point is you can work at your own pace and on whatever interests you at the time so right now I feel like working on Rosettes..

Here is the progress on the Ukulele rosette, for this one I just used random pieces of scrap glued together.

Routing the pocket 

Just sitting there

Glued and leveled with purfling lines

Closer look

And here is a start on the rosette for the crossover guitar, lots more to do wit this one before it is ready to be glued in.

Walnut & Maple 8 segment